Tag: phil bryant
“Pro-Life” Republicans Show Contempt For Children

“Pro-Life” Republicans Show Contempt For Children

There is a profound cynicism, an ugly, jarring hypocrisy, at the heart of the battle to end reproductive rights for women, and nowhere is that fraudulent politics more vividly on display than in Mississippi. The state that brings up the rear on virtually every measure of child vitality and well-being for which we have statistics — behind even my home state of Alabama — has just passed one of the most restrictive anti-abortion measures in the country.

In signing the legislation, Republican Gov. Phil Bryant was able to say this with a straight face: “We here in Mississippi believe in protecting and defending the whole life of that child. … From education to safety to healthcare, it is the child that we are fighting for here in Mississippi.”

That was incredible, mendacious, indecently contemptuous of the facts. Mississippi is one of the worst places in America for a child to grow up, especially if that child is black and poor. Just take a look at the 2018 Health of Women and Children Report, published by the United Health Foundation. Mississippi has the nation’s highest rate of infant mortality and the second-highest rate of child mortality. It has the highest rate of child poverty, with 31 percent of its children poor. That soars to 49 percent for black children, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.

For decades now, it has been a commonplace that the regions of the country that treat poor children with policies ranging from malign neglect to visceral contempt are also the regions that insist on forcing women to carry their pregnancies to term, to bear babies that those women do not believe they can care for. It is also a commonplace that men — usually affluent men with antediluvian views of home and hearth — play starring roles in those campaigns against reproductive rights.

While Mississippi makes an easy case for the hypocrisy on display among the so-called “pro-life” crowd, it is by no means the only place where such cynicism lives casually, out in the open. In most of the states where young lives are most fragile — Louisiana, Alabama and Arkansas among them — conservative lawmakers and their constituents have been busy rolling back reproductive rights.

Take Alabama, where voters last year added a so-called trigger law to the state constitution, a measure that would likely outlaw abortion in the state if the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade, as many political observers expect the high court, now freighted with right-wingers, to do. And like Mississippi, my home state has little use for newborns once they have sprung from the womb.

Alabama ranks 49th in infant mortality; like Mississippi, it sees a higher rate of infant deaths than some developing countries. It ranks 44th in child mortality, according to the Health of Women and Children Report. In Alabama, 26 percent of children live in poverty overall, a figure that surges to 47 percent for black children, the National Center for Child Poverty says.

While the young and poor die or suffer grim diseases for lack of decent health care, Mississippi’s GOP-led state legislature has been rigid in its refusal to expand Medicaid, although, under the terms of the Affordable Care Act, the federal government would shoulder the vast majority of the costs. Alabama’s GOP-dominated legislature has done the same.

Louisiana, which ranks 44th in infant mortality, 48th in child mortality and 47th in maternal mortality, passed a so-called trigger law back in 2006 that could ban abortions. That state has at least expanded Medicaid, which is necessary for the 28 percent of children — 47 percent of black children — who live in poverty there.

There are, among opponents of abortion, a few, mostly Catholics, who are staunch in their support for measures that would ameliorate poverty, break down the barriers of inequality and give poor families a leg up. But most in the anti-abortion crowd don’t show the slightest interest in such measures. They don’t try to cover their misogyny with a fig leaf of remedies to boost the well-being of mothers and children. They know that we know this is an attack on women’s freedom and agency, and they don’t care.

IMAGE: Mississippi’s Republican Governor, Phil Bryant.

Right-Wing Trolls — From Scalia On Down — Take On The Obamacare Decision

Right-Wing Trolls — From Scalia On Down — Take On The Obamacare Decision

Right wingers are going into apoplexy over the Supreme Court’s decisive 6-3 ruling upholding federal health insurance subsidies under Obamacare — and a lot of it is pretty entertaining.

The decision in the King v. Burwell case is likely to be the last fundamental legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act. (More litigation could certainly be on the way — but it would realistically only affect things at the edges.) And after five years of chasing this law like Captain Ahab chased a very large whale, these people really aren’t happy about it.

Of course, if we’re looking for an unhinged right winger who’s full of soundbites on just about any topic, there’s just no topping a member of the Supreme Court itself — Justice Antonin Scalia — who in his dissenting opinion called the ruling “of course quite absurd, and the Court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so.”

“Contrivance, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!” Scalia also declared in a parenthetical aside.

In another memorable line, he referred to the Court practicing “interpretive jiggery-pokery.”

Scalia even capped off a section full of legalese, with an insult in the vein of Don Rickles.

The Court claims that the Act must equate federal and state establishment of Exchanges when it defines a qualified individual as someone who (among other things) lives in the “State that established the Exchange […]. Otherwise, the Court says, there would be no qualified individuals on federal Exchanges, contradicting (for example) the provision requiring every Exchange to take the “‘interests of qualified individuals’” into account when selecting health plans. […]. Pure applesauce.

And in an apparent bid to the start a Twitter hashtag, Scalia stated that the Court “rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUScare” — a line that shall surely live on for years in right-wing talk radio and blogs.

Another government official, Mississippi governor Phil Bryant (R), got in on the act at the state level. And in an interesting choice of words at a time when much of the country is looking back on the struggles for civil rights in the Deep South (not to mention the Civil War), Bryant’s fiery statement invokes a lot of familiar old language of state resistance to the federal government.

Today’s decision does not change the fact that Obamacare is a socialist takeover of health care forced down the throats of the American people without proper review, and it does not slow the massive and unprecedented transfer of wealth that is at the heart of the subsidy system. Make no mistake—Obamacare is not about helping those in need or improving health care delivery. It is about destabilizing our health care system, ceding more control to centralized government and replacing individual liberty with government dependence.

Mississippi was right, as were numerous other states, not to willingly entrench Obamacare by establishing a state-based exchange, and I will continue to resist any efforts that attempt to shove Obamacare deeper into this state.

Bloggers chimed in, too. Michelle Malkin invoked the accusation that the Supreme Court was rewriting the law to mean anything that President Obama would want — citing a gay showtunes composer.

Bryan Fischer is a radio host for a recognized anti-gay hate group, the American Family Association, which is worth noting only because the group recently had to repudiate some of his claims because they were too vile even for them. This moral authority declared the SCOTUS ruling to be all but the death knell for America itself.

Sean Hannity blew his top on his own radio show, reviving one of the classic fearmongering routines against Obamacare, now that it has yet again gotten a clean bill of Constitutional health.

“And I’m telling you, death panels will exist! Because you know what that death panel is gonna be? It’s gonna be called a morphine drip. You get your morphine drip; it depresses your respiration — and guess what, you die! Is that the care you want?”

And Ben Shapiro of Breitbart tweeted out a rather — um, creative reference to the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise.

Photo: Protesters in Minnesota call for smaller government and the repeal of the health care law enacted in March, 2010. (Fibonacci Blue via Flickr)

Mississippi Governor Signs Religious Freedom Bill; Civil Rights Groups Dismayed

Mississippi Governor Signs Religious Freedom Bill; Civil Rights Groups Dismayed

By Paresh Dave, Los Angeles Times 

Mississippi’s governor signed into law Thursday a measure that allows individuals and organizations to sue the government over laws that they feel thwart their ability to practice religion.

“I am proud to sign the Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which will protect the individual religious freedom of Mississippians of all faiths from government interference,” Gov. Phil Bryant said in a statement.

Civil rights groups and advocates of the gay community had opposed the measure and believe that when it takes effect in July it could lead to increased discrimination of gays and lesbians.

“While I commend his desire to take decisive action to protect the First Amendment rights of Mississippians, this bill — a gross distortion of the American promise of religious freedom — will do far more to hurt that cause in the long run,” the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy of the Washington, D.C.-based Interfaith Alliance said in a statement. “Sadly, I fear that the Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act is an attempt to codify discrimination.”

This year, several other states considered joining the 18 that already have religious freedom laws. Each has been criticized because it could pave the way for businesses to legally refuse to serve gays and lesbians. The law passed in Mississippi is similar to what Arizona has on its books — and had sought to expand as part of a controversial proposal that was recently vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer.

The thrust of Senate Bill 2681 says no law should impose a “substantial burden” on someone’s “exercise of religion” unless there is a “compelling interest” and a lack of less burdensome alternatives.

The bill was amended several times in recent weeks as gay rights supporters lobbied lawmakers and brought in stars, including former ‘N Sync singer Lance Bass, to boost their cause. The second half of the bill adds the phrase “In God we trust” to the state seal, which features an eagle with a shield.

The ACLU and the Human Rights Campaign were among groups expressing worry about what the future might hold in Mississippi.

For example: A health care worker could use the new law to help defend his or her decision in court to deny fertility treatments to a lesbian couple because it would be in conflict with the worker’s religious beliefs, Eunice Rho, advocacy and policy counsel with the ACLU, told the Los Angeles Times this week.

The civil rights group had wanted language in the bill to explicitly say that the law could not be used to undermine anti-discrimination statutes. Lawmakers vowed that would not happen and refused to put the language in the bill, Rho said.

“We remain hopeful that courts throughout the state will reject any attempts to use religion to justify discrimination,” ACLU of Mississippi spokeswoman Morgan Miller said in a statement Thursday. “Nobody should be refused service because of who they are.”

Lawmakers who led the charge for the law said it would help cut red-tape for religious groups. They cited the example of a law requiring churches to get sign-off from 60 percent of surrounding properties prior to construction. Opulent Life Church challenged the Holly Springs city ordinance and settled the suit in federal court.

Photo: magnoliaboysstate via Flickr